made possible in part by the KET endowment for Kentucky productions.

>> Good evening.

Welcome to Senior Scams 2026, a next chapter forum that explores the most common scams that trick many older Americans out of their hard earned cash, and how you can keep from becoming a victim.

Hello, everyone, I'm Renee Shaw.

Scamming is big business from fake tech support and traffic violation texts to impersonation schemes and even romance scams.

Fraudsters are bilking billions of dollars from seniors each and every year, and they're using any means necessary to trap unsuspecting seniors and whittle them out of money or personal information.

Or both.

What's more, with the surge in artificial intelligence, criminals newest tactics can make fraud even harder to spot.

So here to help us all out, to identify the tricks and not fall victim are Tasha Stewart, information officer with the Kentucky Department of Financial Institutions.

Shelly Mae, executive director of the Office of Senior Protections and Mediation with the Kentucky Office of the Attorney General.

Chad Harlan, assistant director of securities with the Kentucky Department of Financial Institutions in the Kentucky Public Protection Cabinet.

Kate Dieruff, assistant U.S.

attorney with the Eastern District of Kentucky.

Heather Clary, community and media relations coordinator for the Better Business Bureau, Greater Kentucky Region, and Kyle Erhart, U.S.

Postal Service inspector in the Lexington domain.

And also with us, my colleague Laura Rogers, who is with AARP Kentucky Volunteer State President Gary Atkins.

And we'll hear from them throughout tonight's program as well.

We certainly want to hear from you and take your questions.

We have volunteers with AARP Kentucky standing by in our visitor center here at KET, and we'll get as many of your questions on the air as we possibly can.

We hope that you'll give us a call at one 809 444664.

Send a question by email at public affairs@ket.org or by X, formerly known as Twitter at Pub Affairs KET.

We will keep that number up throughout our program this evening.

This viewer call in about senior scams and fraud is part of KET ongoing aging initiative, the next chapter that explores the rewards and challenges of growing older.

Our website has a library of programs and resources available to help us all thrive in our golden years, and hopefully we can keep more of our money in our pocket.

Wright.

Thank you all for being here.

This is a very important topic.

We did this for the first time last year, and we had an overwhelming response, and we know that we will again this evening.

First, let's just set the stage on what we're talking about.

What are the most common scams?

Just give us a couple.

We'll go around the Robin and we'll talk about how much money seniors are losing.

Start with you, Mr.

Hart.

>> There's a lot of them, and they're they're always evolving.

I'd say the two the two biggest I probably see are the lottery scams, which have been around forever, it seems like.

And the romance scams, which are really a big problem right now that we see on a regular basis.

>> So explain more about the lottery schemes that you say are.

>> People are contacted and told they've won a lottery, usually in another country.

And in order to gain the funds from that, that lottery, they're required to pay taxes.

And once those taxes start and those fees start, they really never end.

>> And romance scams, we can kind of figure those out, but you can offer more detail about what you see.

>> Yes.

Usually people are befriended, befriended on online, usually social media.

They meet somebody who they believe they're in a relationship or a relationship with, and that always evolves into them sending money to get that person to come and visit them and live with them and marry them.

And unfortunately, those people never, never come and they just continue to take money.

>> Yeah.

And many people are if they fall victim, of course, they feel shame for this miss May and they don't want to come forward.

And so talk to us about the kind of scams.

Maybe add on to what Mr.

Erhart discussed and how much money is at stake here.

>> The Kentucky Attorney General's office, a senior protection.

We have seen an uptick in the arrest warrant jury duty scams.

That was our highest reported scam by type last year.

In 2025.

We also had that made our top ten was investment scams, but it was our number one reported by dollars lost at 72.

Complaints were filed at over 7.2 million in reported losses.

And those investment scams.

>> So talk to us about these jury duty scams.

What does that look like.

>> So typically you'll get a phone call or a text message or an email stating that it appears they're spoofing your telephone, the telephone numbers where they use technology to make it look like it's coming from a telephone number that you may recognize from a government agency or a business.

In this case, it's typically the county sheriff's department, and they will tell you that there's an arrest warrant out for your arrest, for failure to show up for outstanding traffic tickets or something along those that nature and but we can take care of that over the phone for you right here.

And we just need for you to Bitcoin wire transfer gift cards, things of that nature.

And they tell you that you cannot break the phone call.

If you do, then they are likely to go ahead and use your GPS location and come and arrest you.

>> Oh my goodness.

So when if you get that kind of phone call, what should you do next?

>> I can promise you the law enforcement people, agents that I've spoken with have always said that they will not call ahead to let you know they're coming to arrest you.

>> It's probably probably a no brainer, but when you get a call like that, of course it frightens you.

It's very common sense can kind of, you know, be spoiled a little bit when hearing.

>> Scammers like to do they like to, you know, elicit that emotional response from us and try to order to get us to respond quickly from an emotional reaction.

>> Yeah.

And it suspends all logical reasoning.

Exactly.

Heather Clary, talk to us about the Better Business Bureau.

You know, we've talked several times with us about these scams.

What more can you add?

>> Yes, I will say that the Better Business Bureau Scam Tracker, which is a website that monitors all sorts of scams that are reported from all over the country, had our investigator was kind enough to run a few numbers and did indicate that actually, the most scams that were reported as far as dollar losses in the past year were online purchases, because anybody can be taken by anything that you see online.

Also, we're seeing the romance scams and the investment scams, especially with things like Bitcoin going on.

And a lot of the older folks and many folks in general don't understand how that all works.

But there's a fellow at the other end of the line telling you, this is great, you're going to make big money.

And so those are typical.

We're also seeing, sadly enough, as far as finances, advance fee loan scams are still up there where the seniors are needing some kind of money to bail themselves out of some debt.

Yeah.

And they're going to do it, but they need a fee up front and that's illegal.

>> Right, right.

Any dollar amount that you can put to what you're saying, it varies.

>> You know, hundreds of thousands for some of the investment scams.

Not as much, mainly with those online purchase scams.

And I will say the scam tracker traditionally has also shown over the years that while seniors may lose the largest amount of money, they're not always the ones that lose all that are more typical of losing the money.

The younger groups actually can be as susceptible as well, but if you're going to lose the money, the seniors are the ones that are losing the largest amounts.

>> And before we started our conversation on air, miss May, you were talking about, I think it was you who said that the actual the age group is lower than the 60 plus crowd.

Tell us more about this.

>> So in 2025, our office saw, of course, the 60 plus was the highest reported number, but literally just within 100 reports less that age group, 59 to 40 was the second largest group that had been scammed.

>> 40 to 59.

>> 40 to 59.

>> 40 to 59.

And so we think these folks are working.

Maybe they're not as at home, maybe to receive some of these calls, but they're also, you know, being susceptible to them.

We've got two folks with the Kentucky Department of Financial Institutions.

I won't ask you to fight over who goes first, but I'll just throw it out to you and let you choose for yourself about you all get all the information about scams, right?

Like any scam that happens, it comes to your office.

Is that right, Mr.

Harlan?

>> We do get we're kind of a clearinghouse for reports, and then we help make sure they get to the right agency.

A lot of stuff.

What we're seeing right now is impersonation scams.

>> So what does that mean.

What does that look like.

>> It builds off of of the romance.

It's kind of in the same.

But we'll see people impersonating celebrities, reaching out and making people believe they're in some sort of either friendship or romantic relationship with the celebrity.

We're also seeing impersonation of government officials where somebody is contacted, they believe they're talking to somebody from a government agency.

They're either being investigated or they're being told they're a victim and they're being told their money is at risk because it looks like it's being used for a criminal enterprise, and they're being told to liquidate that and usually give it to this impersonator who's going to safekeep it.

During the investigation, we see that both in crypto, and we see it now evolving from crypto to gold bars, where they're telling people to go purchase gold and turn it over to a courier.

>> Wow.

Miss Stewart, do you have any more to add there?

>> I would be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to talk about the toll text scams that everyone, I think, in Kentucky has received at this point.

Yeah, it's just a text that comes to you and it says, you know, you cross this toll bridge and you need to pay this fine.

Of course, it goes to a scam and not to an actual toll company.

>> Yeah, I've gotten a few of those.

Right.

So they will toll company, never reach out to you by text.

Is that the golden rule that these companies won't reach out by text or how do they normally communicate?

If you do owe them money and you've gone across Indiana and you didn't pay the the toll.

>> Fee, I'll say from personal experience, I have received a bill in the mail.

Yeah.

They've never texted me and said, you owe this toll.

And then I'm able to go to their secure website and actually pay that toll there.

>> Yes.

Okay.

So talk to us with the U.S.

Attorney's office.

I mean, I can't imagine what you see.

So tell us about it.

>> Sure.

So at the federal level, we still year over year over year, the largest dollar amount, the largest losses in dollar amounts is still going to be investment scams.

And that's a pretty broad category.

That could be anything from a pretend investment financial advisor, somebody you've met online who is presenting this wonderful opportunity.

You've probably heard the term pig butchering before.

That kind of falls right into.

>> Say that.

>> Again, pig butchering.

>> Okay, explain.

>> Oh, it's a horrible name, but it's what the law enforcement community refers to when somebody has picked out a victim and they have started to feed them information and ask them for money, essentially getting them to buy into this investment and in a way, fatten the pig, right?

So and then they come in for the slaughter, right?

So you send all your money into like a crypto platform or something and, you know, just keep adding, keep adding more money, fatten the pig, and then they'll come in for the slaughter and take the money.

It's a horrible name for something that is also a tragic event, because typically when we're talking about pig butchering or the federal level, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars per victim.

And so when we're talking about ic3.gov.

So that's the major reporting mechanism for computer crimes where it's billions of dollars in loss.

And that's to the older, our older adults.

So people 60 and over.

>> Wow.

Well, we're already learning.

We're only 10 to 12 minutes in and we're learning so much.

And I want to go over now to Laura Rogers, who has Gary Atkins with her, and just get a little bit more information on what AARP Kentucky sees.

Laura.

>> Yes, absolutely.

So our panel has already mentioned, Gary.

A lot of those common scams, the lottery and romance scams, and hey, you missed jury duty.

We're coming for you.

So are there any other scams, though, that you think people really need to be made aware of?

Some common ones you're seeing right now in Kentucky?

>> Well, the grandparent scams, which is basically an imposter scam, a lot of the imposter scams, it can be somebody posing as a grandchild, folks posing as law enforcement, some federal agency.

Imposter scams are big.

They continue to operate here in Kentucky.

The romance scams, the tech scams, the investment scams, all those sort of things.

It's they just throw these out as a shotgun effect to try to get money from anybody in any way that they can.

They can be nice and they can be bad and evil and make threats in order to try to get money.

>> The grandparent scam.

And of course, if, if someone gets a phone call and they think it is their grandchild needing help, they're going to do anything they can.

We know in that moment to to help them, but are they mimicking a voice or what kind of form does that take?

And how is someone going to think that's my grandchild?

>> Many times it's mimicking the voice, and the voice doesn't sound right because they were in an accident, which caused them to have some injury with their voice, or they may refer them to a lawyer that is with them in order to to talk for them.

But I, when I speak to groups around Kentucky about frauds and scams, I encourage people to use a code word that they have with their family peanut butter, gingerbread, whatever it might be, in order to let the family members, if they're communicating some sort of emergency or something that they need assistance, they use that.

So folks in their family know that it's really them.

>> I love that idea.

So that's a proactive approach.

Having that conversation before, hey, this is a scam that's happening.

If you get a phone call, you need to make sure they know the code word before you start sending some type of money or assistance.

>> And AARP, the Fraud Watch Network has lots of tools that can help you to, to stay ahead of these, these frauds and scams.

They have.

You can sign up for things through AARP fraud watch for tracking scams, and it can show things in your geographical area for where scams are being reported.

You can search for that.

You can get biweekly alerts through the Fraud Watch network.

You can hear real fraud scam stories.

You can contact a fraud specialist through our helpline, and there's a support group that you can join.

Also, if you've been a victim of this and a survivor, and you can talk with other people about that and get you through this, and they can help you to find reporting sources that you can go to and report what has happened to you.

>> That's an excellent resource.

The AARP Fraud Watch Network.

So from prevention to even aftermath, if you've been a victim, where to turn to get some help?

So excellent.

Lots more that we'll be discussing throughout the show, but for now, we'll send it back over to Renee and her panel.

>> Yeah, thank you, Laura, and thank you, Gary.

That was some great information.

And the number on your screen, one 809 444664.

That is the number to contact us tonight while this program is being aired live, we have a phone bank in our KET headquarters visitor center standing by to take your calls and they are busy or trying to get busy.

So let's make sure that we get your call this evening, and they'll pass along as many as possible so that we can answer them.

And we have some that are coming in.

And on the other side of this next story you're going to see, we'll take some of those questions.

We've revisited the story and experience of Miss Mary Ellen Strange that we brought to you last year in July.

She is active with sharing her story through AARP, hoping to help others avoid what she went through.

She encountered a highly sophisticated scam that took her for nearly a half $1 million.

Our June Leffler met her at her home in July of last year, and we reshared her story.

>> Mary Ellen Strange lives in southern Indiana with her dog Bella.

Last year, she got a pesky spam call claiming to be Amazon.

She wasn't falling for it.

>> And I said, this is crazy.

This is not me.

No, I didn't buy a MacBook Pro and ship it to New York.

And I don't have time for this right now.

And I hung up the phone.

>> But hours later, she wanted to make sure no one was making purchases with her account.

>> A gentleman answered the phone and he said all the same things to me, and he.

He added to that there were some charges of child pornography purchases made in my name, and that got my attention because I didn't call back the original caller.

I googled Amazon fraud unit and called them.

>> Over seven weeks, scammers posing as federal authorities took nearly $400,000 from strange.

They came to her door and she gave them whatever they asked for.

>> My handler knew where the nearest crypto machine was to my house two blocks away.

He instructed me where to go and what to do, and it seems crazy, of course, when I look back on it now.

But at the time he gave me the impression that he was trying to help me.

This was how he was documenting my money to present to the courts that I was not money laundering.

I had access to that money and I could prove it.

>> She thought this would end with official documents proving her innocence to crimes she never committed.

>> No, he never confirmed the meeting.

I never heard from him again.

No one showed up on Monday, and that's when I reached out to my family member and said, I think I'm in trouble.

Of course, I felt embarrassed, I felt stupid, I felt ignorant, I felt all those negative things, and I wanted to kill myself.

When I first realized what had happened.

>> What made it worse is that she now has to pay $100,000 to the IRS for the pretax money she took out of her retirement.

>> I mean, I don't think you should ever be taxed for money that was stolen from you.

It's not right.

>> She hopes congressional action will solve her tax situation, but she never expects to recoup the money that was stolen.

She has been able to turn a once shameful situation into a lesson for others.

>> I think it does help me to share my story for.

For me, it's healing.

And also it's it's something I feel like I need to do to help other people.

I don't want it to happen to anyone else.

>> Strange has partnered with AARP to share her cautionary yet empowering tale far and wide for KET.

I'm June Leffler.

>> Thank you so much.

June rather excuse me.

Through her though, her scammer swore her to secrecy, Mary Ellen did confide in her family once she realized what had happened, including a relative who she says is a former FBI agent and her investigation is still ongoing.

We.

AARP Kentucky at the Senior Scam Jam shared this story.

Mary Ellen Strange was there and shared this.

You two were there.

I mean, when you hear $400,000 that she lost and the experience and this woman is highly educated and, you know, had some skepticism, but they sounded so real.

Tasha Stewart, talk to us about this.

>> You know, I think it's so important to acknowledge how brave Miss Strange was in coming forward with her story.

A lot of people, you know, they just won't talk about scams for the stigma for many other reasons.

But by her sharing her story, she's really breaking down that stigma and starting these conversations that we need to be having.

>> Yeah.

What's the likelihood that she'll get that money back?

Kate Dieruff.

>> It's hard to say.

I don't know the facts of her case.

So often the scammers are located overseas.

The money is able to be moved in a very quick fashion, and when it goes overseas, it makes it infinitely harder for us to recover.

That makes it all the more important to try to report as quickly as possible.

The quicker you report, the more likely we are to be able to try to recover your money.

If it isn't gone, there are mechanisms that we can pull to try to keep the money from going too far out of our reach.

>> So what's the incident report?

I mean, how likely are people to report?

>> The statistics are pretty rough.

What we've been told for years is about 1 in 44 people report their victimization.

And I think that has a lot to do with what Tasha was saying, with the shame and people not realizing that they're in the in the middle of a scam.

I used to actually, when I first met Kyle, he probably doesn't remember this, but I would call him the heartbreaker because he needed to go tell people that they were involved in a romance scam so often to go and talk to these people face to face, because they just didn't realize that they were so far in the grips of of a scam.

So it's realizing that you're in a scam and reporting it and feeling comfortable doing that.

>> And so when should you report?

When you first get the text that seems suspicious or when you fall victim to it?

>> Yeah.

So I, our, our recommendation is always to report, but it doesn't help if all of us at this table got the same text from the same number and report it.

It's really helpful when you lose money or you lose some data of your own personal identifying information to report that, and you can report it to a number of sources.

If it's an emergency, it's 911.

That's the only source.

But if it's not an emergency, you can report it to local law enforcement.

FBI if it involves the computer, I see 3.gov.

That's the letter I. The letter c3.gov is a great reporting mechanism, but there's an alphabet soup of reporting agencies.

The Kentucky Attorney General's office is also wonderful.

But and you can just you can Google who to report to, but quicker is better, right.

>> And the Kentucky Department of Financial Institutions is part of your job to help people try to recover their losses.

And what's the likelihood that that happens or what's the the.

>> That's always a goal.

As the other panelists have mentioned so many times now, the scam is occurring out of the country.

So by the time, especially with cryptocurrency, as quickly as that money moves, you know, historically we've been able to go to a bank and find the account where their check was deposited and find the funds.

But now with, with crypto, it literally in under five minutes can be in another country and withdrawn outside of, of U.S.

jurisdiction and extradition, even with the gold bars.

What we're hearing is if if you're a victim of a scam where they're asking you to purchase gold bars and give it to a courier, those couriers are coming in from the border, either southern or often northern border.

And by the time they hit your porch, they're already halfway back to the border.

Yeah.

And once that gets out of the country, it's extremely hard to get back.

>> Yeah.

Mr.

Erhart, how does cross state or international fraud complicate your investigative process?

>> It's what Kate just said.

It makes it very difficult.

My jurisdiction ends at the border of the United States, and most of these schemes are operated in other countries.

As far as way as Africa.

And there are operated in countries that don't necessarily want to work with the United States and getting that money back.

So it's it's very difficult.

Like Kate said, time is of the essence for what I deal with with the Postal Service.

If we can get that information, we can get that money back.

A lot of people in these scams send cash that's changing due to crypto, like Chad said.

But cash is still a thing.

People still mail tens and thousands and tens of thousands of dollars in cash through the mail to scammers.

And if we get that information quick enough, we can get that package back.

>> Yeah.

How does the cryptocurrency Bitcoin stuff work?

What's that like?

>> Do we need a whole nother.

>> Hour on that.

>> On that?

But you know, there are three ways to get cryptocurrency.

You can you can mine cryptocurrency, which nobody can do anymore unless you're a highly sophisticated enterprise.

You can trade it and you can buy it.

So you can buy it at ATMs.

You can buy it from popular websites like coinbase.com or something like that, or you can buy it peer to peer.

So from somebody you've met online.

>> Yeah.

And one of the things that we've talked about, Heather Clary is do not buy gift cards and send those, right?

If somebody's saying you can wipe your debt clean or whatever, or we can handle this, all you need to do is go get $900,000,050 gift cards, right?

I'm exaggerating here.

>> The con artists love to use the untraceable methods that are unrecoverable.

And we have talked about that.

The IRS says, I owe money.

Go to Best Buy and buy some gift cards, go to Kroger and buy gift cards.

>> And go to different places and buy.

>> Different places around and certain amounts.

Because I believe and I'm coming from a nonprofit organization standpoint, but I believe our government friends will tell us that.

I think there's just a limit at which the gift cards don't become a red flag of a bunch of them being bought and sent somewhere.

So you can't recover those.

And whether they're saying you need to pay this to collect your prize from this sweepstakes you've won or whatnot, they're going to tell you to take a picture of the front, take a picture of the back, text that to us, and then we're going to take, well, guess what?

You just gave them the number.

They've emptied it, you've lost the money and that's it.

Yeah.

So yeah.

>> Okay, so we've got some really good questions coming in.

I'm going to read these as they're coming in.

If one receives an obvious scam by text, is there any way to forward that to an appropriate agency.

And what is the likelihood the perpetrator being caught may.

>> The likelihood is I'd say pretty slim.

It becomes they're using the voice over internet phone systems.

It becomes very difficult to trace those numbers.

We I don't think you can actually report it to any one of our agencies through a text message.

But if you do the delete and report, the phone companies actually do, those numbers do get downloaded and stored as a, you know, in a database that is shared at a higher level of government agency from those cellular carriers?

>> Well, that's a good point because often I think, how many times have I hit delete and report?

And I've wondered, is anything happening there?

And so that actually is going somewhere for somebody to, to keep track of.

Okay, anyone else have any input on that question?

I'll move on.

If you do not, is blocking a suspicious text email enough or is there more we can do to stop scammers?

>> I would say that's that's a great start is just don't entertain it.

Don't give the person an audience.

Obviously they're going to move on to somebody else, but that's the purpose of this year is to educate people so that hopefully everybody learns how these things operate and you don't give them an opportunity.

>> Yeah.

So don't even respond to the text because then they know they've reached a live human right.

Is that the best advice?

>> They're fishing.

They're fishing to see what bait that you're going to take.

When we travel around and we do our education and our outreach, I, we see it typically more with men that if they're going to waste my time, I'm going to waste their time and they'll take the call or they'll, you know, do some dialog back and forth in the text message and everything.

Well, what the consumer has done is escalated themselves to a another level of this is an active number.

This is a live person.

Let's continue to bait them and see if we can get them on the hook.

>> Yeah.

So just don't answer them.

Ignore them.

Okay.

This caller received a call from a person claiming she needed to purchase a life insurance product that was supported, funded by the Kentucky government.

Is that a scam?

>> Without more information, it would be hard to determine specifically, but there is a Kentucky Department of Insurance, and I would encourage anybody who gets a contacted on that to contact the Kentucky Department of Insurance, run that through them, give them the specific information, and that way they can vet it and let you know if, when you're dealing with a licensed person, if there's any complaints or if it appears to be something that's fraudulent.

>> Okay, what do you need to do if you get someone that says they have done something with the deed of your home?

So I'm assuming this is either by mail or by some other kind of maybe phone communication or text.

>> Renee, let's just back it up before we get to that point.

Okay?

A lot of the county clerk's offices will offer a clerk alert.

I know that Jefferson County has had theirs in place for a long time.

I believe Franklin County and Fayette also have it.

And that is where a individual can go on, and they can sign up to be alerted if there's any activity on their deed.

And so we highly recommend that, especially as we are seeing real estate scams and the AG's Office of Senior Protection and Mediation, we see real estate scams, rental scams are in our top ten, both by reports and by dollars lost each year.

>> So what are they saying?

How are what's the bait and the hook there?

>> Well, a lot of times they'll go on and they will try.

And somehow or another they get access to that deed and they fraudulently take over the deed to someone's property and they don't know it until, you know, there's a missed payment.

There's, you know, that's pretty much the way it is with most of these frauds that an individual may not know that their identity has been stolen or accounts have been opened, loans, bank accounts, car loans, house rentals or purchases have not been have been opened in their name until they run a credit report.

And so we actually recommend that people check their credit regularly.

And the FTC recommends the my our annual credit report.com.

And you can actually do that on a weekly basis now.

And it does not impact your credit score.

If you're just looking to check to make sure that everything is as it should be.

>> And people are hearing this and thinking, oh, this is great information, but my gosh, I'm just going to spend my day making sure that my, my home deed is good and that I'm not on some list and that my credits all where it should be, right?

I mean, it can seem kind of arduous.

>> It can.

And, you know, a lot of us that are traveling around with the, the Secret Service, finance, the FBI, a lot of us are recommending that credit freezes now.

>> Okay.

>> Highly, highly recommended.

>> So how do you do that?

How do you freeze your credit?

>> You can do it various ways.

You can contact each of the three credit bureaus and set them up.

A lot of times they'll say, well, if you contact one, they'll contact the other.

But I'm one of those people.

I like to make sure that it's done.

So I would recommend you contact each individual entity and yourself personally.

There's also a lot of different.

Services that you can pay for, like my ID, care.com, LifeLock, Norton, just to name a few.

And you can sign up and they will monitor your credit for you and alert you if something has taken place or, and flagged that for you and let you know.

>> And those are affordable preventive tools.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay.

All right.

So we're getting some more questions coming in.

Make sure that we get yours.

The number is on the screen.

Also, you can contact us by Twitter and by email.

So we'll keep that information up for you.

In the meantime, we're going to go back over to Laura Rogers who's also in the studio with us.

Laura.

>> Yeah.

Thanks, Renee.

And just following up on the home deed scams, we had a question about that.

And Gary, you say the AARP is on top of that one as well.

>> What we're looking at the possibility of trying to address that with the legislature next year.

>> Yeah, that'd be excellent.

Okay.

I want to ask you about cryptocurrency that was also touched on by our panel.

And we also you and I looked at each other when we heard Miss Mary Ellen Strange's story, because she was directed to go to one of these crypto machines or crypto kiosks, if you will.

So what scams are we seeing involving these machines?

Because you all also worked on some legislation.

>> Concerning the same sort of things.

Any of the scams that we've talked about already, either you and I or the panel.

But basically it's it's a scam where they get the money and it's an easy way for these criminals to do that.

But during the this last legislative session, we worked with representative Tom Smith and Representative Michael Meredith and Senator Steve Rawlings to enact some some laws here in Kentucky, because we didn't have anything about these crypto kiosks.

And so this is the first legislation that has been done on in Kentucky about public protection on these things, and hopefully that will help to stop the crypto kiosk scams and frauds that's going on.

The governor signed this legislation, legislation in March, and since then, the number of crypto kiosks has dropped before we enacted any kind of legislation, and it actually will not take effect until early next year, because the Department of Financial Institutions has to develop regulations for this.

But we had 400 and about 475 crypto kiosks.

Kentucky, one of the crypto kiosks, when we were having meetings with their lobbyists and representatives, and some of the members of the legislature said that if they couldn't continue to make the money they were, they may not be able to be in operation.

One of those crypto kiosk operators has filed bankruptcy, so now we've got about 314 crypto kiosks in Kentucky.

So the numbers have gone down significantly.

And talking to the FBI about a week and a half ago, there's only five machines in Kentucky that dispense cash.

All the other machines take cash.

>> They'd rather take your money than give it back.

>> To you.

Absolutely.

And and in the Iowa attorney general a couple of years ago, did some surveys, did some research on this and Iowa and found that these crypto kiosks are used for fraud.

And over 90% of the time since we've.

Yeah, since we have adopted the legislation that we have Tennessee, Indiana and Minnesota has outright banned these machines.

And the scams that we have have the same sort of thing in, in all of them, there's that that unexpected contact out of the blue, a sense of, of an emotional impact upon you and a sense of urgency.

And that's what all these scams do with the crypto.

They will tell you, with you on the phone, tell you how to go to your bank or credit union to get cash out.

They'll tell you what they'll be on the phone with you.

They'll tell you what to say so that you can get the money.

Then they'll direct you to go to one of these crypto kiosks.

They know where they're located at.

They will tell you where to go to with the legislation that we are going to be using here in Kentucky, it's going to limit daily transactions to $2,000 a day, a 30 day transaction of cap of $10,500.

These are still too much for me to to be happy with, but it would give the individual an opportunity to think about what am I doing?

Maybe this isn't the federal government that I'm sending this money to.

Maybe it's not the FBI or the Secret Service or the IRS.

>> I do want to ask if somebody is scammed.

They might.

Or they often do feel.

And we heard this from Miss Strange as well, embarrassed and like, what was I thinking?

I should have known better.

And they don't maybe want to reveal it to anybody because they don't want to be under scrutiny for falling for it.

But I know you all want to change that narrative.

I mean, isn't it best that people report it because it could hopefully prevent this from happening to someone else?

>> It it it it does.

And fraud around the country is significantly underreported.

So it's very, very important to report these things.

And I tell folks when I'm out talking around Kentucky that they need to report it to their local law enforcement, to the state police, if it's a computer crime online to report it to the FBI through the ic3.gov.

ICE l3.gov.

I've talked with the FBI.

As soon as they get one of these reports, they start their investigation.

And you don't have to be the the person who's been defrauded in order to file the report, if you're aware of it, of a friend doing that, you can report it for them.

>> Or maybe if you have an older parent or something, you could report it on their behalf.

And, and can that ever be recouped or.

>> Well, again, the problem is, especially with the crypto, once the money is sent, it's gone.

The even with crypto, it can still be traced.

It's difficult, but it can be traced.

But once it goes to a location, many times it will splinter off into other locations.

>> It makes it harder to.

>> Track, which makes it harder to track.

>> And of course, the AARP Fraud Watch Network.

Again, you offer a lot of support and resources, right?

>> And, and, you know, we talk about getting financial institutions to try to hold on to the money, hold on to the transaction given opportunity, if they suspect fraud to report it and to try to get that information out to the individuals here in in Kentucky.

>> Right.

All right.

Thank you so much, Gary.

We'll chat again here in just a little bit, but for now.

Ray Renee, we'll send it back to you.

>> Thank you so much.

Care to respond to what Mr.

Atkins said?

But I'm also kind of curious, are there any mandatory reporting laws or regulations in Kentucky that we should be aware of when it comes to these type of scams and fraud schemes?

>> Nunn banks are required.

Financial institutions are required to report suspicious activities, and there are regulations around cryptocurrency companies.

They have to register with the federal government, with an entity called FinCEN to be regulated as well, and they are to report suspicious activity as well.

So there are reporting requirements at the financial institution level or the cryptocurrency entity level.

>> Yeah.

All right.

To kind of piggyback off what Mr.

Atkins and Laura were talking about, how often do how often are the people caught who do these scams and what are the penalties?

>> We, we work tirelessly to try to investigate, identify and prosecute these people.

It is it is an arduous task.

And usually if it is not somebody you already know that is scamming you, usually that scammer has scammed multiple times.

So our cases are not just one victim.

We're trying to do justice by 200 victims located all around the country.

So they're slow.

And that can be really frustrating.

But it is our job to make sure that we take into account the entirety of the criminal conduct, the penalties.

It depends on what we're charging them with.

Prosecutors favorite tool is called wire fraud, and that has a maximum penalty of 20 years.

But whether they get 20 years or not is highly dependent on the facts and circumstances of the offense and the offender.

>> Yeah.

So David from Fayette County asked how to know if a burial plan offer is real or a scam.

He has received many calls lately.

This is one we haven't talked about.

What's what's up with the burial scams?

>> Is it selling burial insurance?

Perhaps because you were commenting about checking with the Department of Insurance if anything's offering insurance.

But we'd also invite people to also check out the company.

With BB B, we get calls, people checking out things they get in the mail all the time.

And what's troubling with some of them is they don't actually outline a name of a business on it.

They're just maybe an 800 number or something like that.

And we'll Google and see if we can find out what it is.

But if they're not being that upfront about it, you might want to reconsider.

If you're looking for something like that, shop with people that are closer to home that you can trust, right?

>> And the BB B has reputable vendors there that they can scope out.

>> And we invite people to go to bb.org and look up any type of business you're looking for.

That's a BB B accredited business.

They meet our standards.

They've promised to respond to any customer complaints as opposed to somebody you've never heard of before who might be from out of state.

We can certainly help guide you in that direction.

>> Yeah.

Any comment Chad there?

>> I'll just say I'm certainly no expert on it, but I know there is a government run trust that manages that.

If you're dealing with a nurse or, sorry, a funeral home that you're doing pre-planning, make sure you're writing the check to a trust and that they're actually a licensed nurse or a funeral home and, you know, check them out, check them out with the BB B, check them out with the attorney general's office, see if they have complaints, the company that you're being taught to and, you know, just take reasonable safeguards before.

>> Miss May.

>> I would say that I for since 2021, I've handled all Cemetery funeral home Pre-need complaints along with the real estate and they keep they keep me pretty busy.

We do see a lot of bad characters in the funeral home industry and the Pre-need burial.

Unfortunately, from time to time that somebody has gone ahead and those checks are usually made out to that entity that is selling the pre-need.

And those checks are then supposed to be turned over to those, those trusts and set up in a person's name.

And there is a database that can be looked at.

And we have, you know, been able to put a stop to some of those here recently over the last several years that are not putting those trusts, those monies in trust for individuals.

>> Yeah.

Joyce from Casey County says she was contacted by a person who knew her Medicare and Medicaid numbers.

And she says, how did they know that?

We assumed they were correct, that the numbers that were recited back to her.

So how did they get that information?

>> A lot of times I think that it's it's from some type of data breach.

Data breaches are, are really big.

And those are usually, you know, we kind of classify it as a data breach, identity theft, or, you know, a just plain old, good old theft is how usually we break it down into these different types of scams and how they are accumulated and, and everything.

And so I would say that, you know.

Yeah.

>> Well, we've always heard that, you know, don't give out your Social Security number, your Medicare number, your Medicaid number.

But if somebody has it now, what if somebody has it who shouldn't.

>> Take safeguards?

So like we mentioned, make sure your credit reports locked down so that they can't use it even if they have it.

Or at.

>> Least can you get it changed.

>> That I don't know, you would be able to contact Social Security Administration and, and request that if you believe active fraud is going on.

But the biggest thing is, is as has been mentioned throughout this evening, is, is there's more information on all of us available than we, any of us are comfortable with.

The biggest thing you can do is safeguard the actions you take.

Double check anybody who's contacting you, make sure you're actually talking to a legitimate source and that they haven't got the information from a nefarious source and trying to use it against you.

>> This person says, quote, I was scammed through a phone caller who staged themselves as the bank.

We reported it to the bank immediately.

The money was taken through an a c h transfer.

What are the chances of the bank recovering the money?

And does the bank have any liability?

>> I actually had that happen to me personally.

Someone was able to access my bank account and wired money to another bank in another state, and fortunately it was something I noticed pretty quickly.

Like Chad said, it's, you know, along with like checking your credit score, checking your bank statements regularly, just making sure you're on top of things.

Fortunately, I did that and I saw the transaction take place pretty quickly, contacted my bank, and they were able to, to make me whole.

As far as what happened on the other end, I believe that money, once it got into the bank account and the other State, it just splintered off, kind of like Gary had spoken about and just started going different places and ended up in another country.

>> Interesting.

Wow.

Janice Taylor, this is a viewer who asked, how do scam callers know your personal information, and why do scammers seem to call senior citizens more?

But we've talked about how that there is another group age group that's rising in this.

But what do you say to Miss Taylor?

>> There are data brokers.

Your information is for sale.

Over the years, my office has investigated a lot of boiler room call centers, and they buy lists and they're categorized.

Like Kyle had said earlier, that if you answer the call and interact, you bump yourself up on the list because now you're a check mark that says it's a real number.

And that means they can sell your number for more.

So that's where the information comes from.

That was it used to be analog where you would order a list and it would come in a box of paper, and now it's electronic.

So it's even easier for people to trade in that information.

>> Yeah.

Anyone else care to comment?

>> Can always trust what's on the caller ID.

Either they spoof it all the time.

It can look like anybody's number and it's not them at all.

So you can't always trust what you see there too.

It's just pulling a switcheroo on you.

And even reporting that number may not even get you to who's really behind it.

>> Yeah.

>> And our education and outreach, you know, we really try to, to focus on getting across practice, the pause just really kind of just stop, think about what's being asked.

Anytime they are asking for you to make payment right away and, you know, untraceable amounts ways, if they are asking for your personal identifiers, you know, just really stop, hang up, call the known published number for that entity.

A lot of times, if you're trying to determine if it is something that is fraudulent or a scam, if you put it in your browser bar with the word scam or fraud, a lot of times you're going to get people, they'll, you know, it gets it gets populated on the internet, right?

And so just really practice that pause and do your due diligence and really take a look at what's being asked of you.

>> And I like what you said there, though, Shelly, about how one practice the pause.

That's one takeaway for tonight.

But also put that name and the and the key word scam in there, because sometimes we'll just Google the name of the entity.

And I think we heard that from Mary Ellen Strange and she thought it was legitimate.

You know, it was probably the first thing that came up.

And she thought, well, that sounds right.

And then look what happened.

>> And these scammers, they're, they're paying to be at the top of the Google list or the browser list these days.

And so I know that sometimes I get in a hurry and I'm googling something for, you know, a presentation, and then it comes across and I'm like, oh, and then I click on it and I go to look at it.

I'm like, oh, this is not what I want.

And so I get back out of it and I go to, you know, the established, known official website, I get an official telephone number, you know, the bank ones that we, you know, the question was on the bank account.

We, you know, we hear that a lot, a lot of the banks and financial institutions are, are having us come in and do education for their, their teams.

Yeah.

And they're like, you know, so I always tell everybody, if you're, if your bank teller tells you that, that you're being scammed, listen to them.

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> And to build on what Shelley was saying with artificial intelligence on the scene now, it makes it even more difficult to know, is this a real website or is this a website that a scammer has built even a scam within a scam, if you will.

>> Yeah.

Good point.

Okay, this caller Pat said after 65, she began getting more scam phone calls, specifically about taxes, jury duty, speeding tickets, and she receives voicemails at least six days a week while changing her phone number.

>> Help 100%.

>> Yeah, okay.

>> That's one of the things I always advise people who have gotten either fallen for a scam or in this case, maybe they're just getting someone's phishing and trying to find them.

Find victims is it's not something people want to hear, but unfortunately, changing your phone number is probably one of the best things you can do.

My parents have had the same home phone number for probably 45 years.

They would not want to change their phone number, but it's one of those things that it's probably your one of your best solutions to getting the phone calls to stop.

>> Okay, our time is quickly dwindling.

We want to go back to Laura Rogers one more time, maybe for just a minute, to get some words of wisdom from Gary Adkins with AARP Kentucky.

Laura.

>> Yeah.

Gary, let's just talk about some simple practical steps, protective steps that people can do to prevent themselves from falling victim to some of these scams.

>> Right?

And, you know, these type of things are three elements that criminals use that unexpected contact, the surge of emotion and the sense of urgency.

You have to pause, reflect and protect.

That's the key thing.

And, you know, the Fraud Watch Network has trained fraud specialists that can talk to individuals when they call in about what has happened, and that can talk you through it, help you deal with it, and refer you to a reporting agency.

We with AARP Kentucky, we conduct community education sessions with civic groups, religious groups, law enforcement groups, and we talk about how to spot and how to avoid scams.

Just in the last 30 days or so, I've had sessions that I did with the Maysville Mason County Sheriff's Office and the PD, the Taylor Mill Police Department community Group, and also the Lawrenceburg Police Department community group.

So we do those sort of things.

And, you know, we work with our our federal and our state legislators to try to enact legislation in order to protect folks that have been fallen victims into these fraud scams and, and the like.

We recently talked with the federal congressional members about the Guard Act to provide funding for law enforcement.

So they have the the funds and the personnel in order to do these type of investigations.

>> Absolutely.

Well, thank you so much for your advocacy work.

We appreciate it.

And for this great conversation tonight.

Gary Adkins a a r P Kentucky State president.

We appreciate it.

Absolutely so much, Renee.

>> Thank you, Laura, and thank you, Gary.

Just a couple of more questions here in three minutes.

So Patricia from Lexington said she needed help with her Apple phone and called an 800 number that she found online.

When she called the number, they asked her questions and took her personal information.

Her bank account was accessed and abused.

She can't get Apple or law enforcement to take the number off the web.

How do you get that number taken down, she asks.

Can she get it taken down?

>> I hope that she has reported that incident to ic3.gov and also to Google itself.

But beyond that, it's it's up to it's up to Google to, to get that number taken down.

>> And so speaking of Google, Linda from Marion County asked, when you Google a number, how do you know if it's the correct business you're trying to reach?

>> You don't always you don't.

>> Always know.

That's not reassuring there.

Heather.

>> Well, you never know.

Like you you stated earlier, they can.

Anybody can buy their way up the listings of Google.

You know, if you want to check something out, we do invite people to check with the Better Business Bureau.

We may have a line on that as well.

Be able to look up the company for you to see if the numbers match is what we have on file.

That's one thing you can try.

>> Karen from Jefferson County ask, what do you do after your laptop email was hacked?

Where do you find help?

>> I'd be careful about that because there's a lot of scams out there, especially when you try to go and seek help online.

By googling tech support, you'll find a lot of websites that are scams in themselves.

So you really have to be very careful.

What I would, I typically tell people, if you have the ability to take your computer somewhere, Geek Squad at Best Buy some.

And I know that's not always an option for especially elderly people, but that's the best thing you can do as opposed to kind of gambling, going online, finding someone that you're going to talk to and that they're ultimately going to ask for payment and you're going to have to give them a credit card number at some point, even if they're legitimate, I would take it somewhere local.

>> Yeah, it's best to do that stuff in person, right?

>> And yes, and you need to disconnect from the internet immediately.

You need to put a gap between you and the internet so that you can get get to a place where a geek squad could come in and help.

I'd also, we haven't mentioned this once.

You need to reset your passwords anytime.

Yes, anytime.

Anywhere.

Something feels amiss.

Do a password reset on your most important accounts, your bank accounts, anything that's going to have your personal identifying information that's not hard to do.

>> And pass key.

Good.

>> Pass key is good.

Perfect.

And two factor authentication is, is is great.

>> Okay.

Those are good words to end on because we wanted to get to that.

And thank you for leading us in that direction.

And thank you all for some very good questions tonight.

We want to thank our volunteers and our visitor center, AARP Kentucky, for taking your phone calls this evening.

Gary Atkins with AARP for being with our Laura Rogers and our panel here, who's helped to dissect some of these very complex issues.

And hopefully we've given you some tools to keep you safe.

Thank you for joining us for our special Focus on Senior Scams 2026 a conversation, and hopefully a resource you and your family can refer to again and again.

Thank you so much for watching.

I'm Renee Shawn.

Until I see you again, take really good care.

Good night.